It’s pretty obvious that the newt wants to run, but taking a boneheaded position like this guarantees that he’ll lose - badly. Leftists would never vote for him for any reason and again he marks out territory to intentionally piss off the right.
One of the dumbest bright guys I know.
Inconsistencies Though Santorum made few flip-flops during his congressional career, a notable exception was his shifting stance on federal ethanol subsidies. “Prior to 9/11, I was not a big fan of ethanol subsidies but 2001 changed my mind on a lot of things, and one of them was trying to support domestic energy and this is part of it,” Santorum told IowaPolitics.com January 27, 2011. “My pledge to you is to work with this industry to create a bigger and bigger place in the market for domestically produced ethanol biodiesel.”